Gagging Rushdie: Why Congress appeased the mob

The principal culprits in the Salman Rushdie affair are the UPA government and its communal bedfellows amongst the Muslim leadership. Both have a vested interest in keeping ordinary Muslims in socio-economic twilight. The more the community wallows in a theological quagmire, the easier it is to pick off Muslim votes en masse.

The decades-long collusion between “secular” politicians and fundamentalist Muslim leaders has severely damaged the cause of Islam. Interpreted correctly, Islam is a liberal and compassionate religion. It has been hijacked by politicians seeking votes, power and money in the name of counterfeit secularism. The duplicity of political and religious leaders has cost Muslims dearly.

The Rajinder Sachar committee report exposed how Muslims are more backward today than even SC/STs due to government policies over several decades – policies that appease but don’t educate.

The deafening silence of senior political leaders over the illegal intimidation of Rushdie by Muslim fundamentalists exposes how communal politics has been institutionalised under the guise of secularism. This represents the subversion of India’s historical tradition of tolerant secularism. Political and religious leaders claim to protect it but insidiously undermine it.

Leading politicians like Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have a responsibility to speak up for the rule of law and use all the instruments of the state they command to enforce that law. To succumb to fundamentalists is to succumb to mobocracy. Ironically, the same Congress leaders and their fawning spokesmen, including senior editor-courtiers, mocked Anna Hazare for engaging in “mobocracy”. What we saw in the Rushdie affair this week fits the real definition of mobocracy – not Anna’s principal-based, anti-corruption movement.

When governments are run like feudal family fiefs, preserving power and wealth at any cost – including at the cost of keeping an entire community backward and paranoid – vested interest supersedes the national interest. India is shamed by such leaders. A people get the government they deserve. But Indians surely deserve a better government that this.

Congress ministers and MPs can only rise up to a feudal mezzanine ceiling – the really bright languish or leave. The result: a government without an intellectual or ideological core which genuflects to private interests.

Feudal dynasty lies at the heart of India’s social, economic and political shortcomings. To create a modern, tolerant, genuinely – not fraudulently – secular India, dynasties must be replaced by meritocracies. A government that cannot protect the people (who elect and pay that government to serve them) from intimidation and threats of violence from fundamentalists does not deserve to stay in office.

Rushdie once travelled to Mumbai and Delhi with me to deliver an annual lecture hosted by our publishing group. The theme he chose: Politics and The Novel. Freedom of expression, as he then said to a large and appreciative audience, is not absolute but it is not the business of political or religious leaders to decide its limits. For that there is the law and the Constitution.

During our two-hour flight from Mumbai to Delhi, Rushdie spoke of his admiration for India’s tolerant secularism but decried the collusive agenda of fundamentalist Muslim leaders and their political patrons.

What does the Congress hope to gain from its handling of Rushdie? Muslim votes? If so, this is a hopelessly shortsighted strategy. Muslims are bound one day to see through the cynical ploy to exploit them for electoral gain. When that realisation gathers critical mass, there will be a backlash.

Politicians who exploit religion to win power will feel the full force of that backlash sooner than they imagine.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Gagging Rushdie: Why Congress appeased the mob

The principal culprits in the Salman Rushdie affair are the UPA government and its communal bedfellows amongst the Muslim leadership. Both have a vested interest in keeping ordinary Muslims in socio-economic twilight. The more the community wallows in a theological quagmire, the easier it is to pick off Muslim votes en masse.

The decades-long collusion between “secular” politicians and fundamentalist Muslim leaders has severely damaged the cause of Islam. Interpreted correctly, Islam is a liberal and compassionate religion. It has been hijacked by politicians seeking votes, power and money in the name of counterfeit secularism.

The duplicity of political and religious leaders has cost Muslims dearly. The Rajinder Sachar committee report exposed how Muslims are more backward today than even SC/STs due to government policies over several decades – policies that appease but don’t educate.

The deafening silence of senior political leaders over the illegal intimidation of Rushdie by Muslim fundamentalists exposes how communal politics has been institutionalised under the guise of secularism. This represents the subversion of India’s historical tradition of tolerant secularism. Political and religious leaders claim to protect it but insidiously undermine it.

Leading politicians like Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have a responsibility to speak up for the rule of law and use all the instruments of the state they command to enforce that law. To succumb to fundamentalists is to succumb to mobocracy. Ironically, the same Congress leaders and their fawning spokesmen, including senior editor-courtiers, mocked Anna Hazare for engaging in “mobocracy”. What we saw in the Rushdie affair this week fits the real definition of mobocracy – not Anna’s principal-based, anti-corruption movement.

When governments are run like feudal family fiefs, preserving power and wealth at any cost – including at the cost of keeping an entire community backward and paranoid – vested interest supersedes the national interest. India is shamed by such leaders. A people get the government they deserve. But Indians surely deserve a better government that this.

Congress ministers and MPs can only rise up to a feudal mezzanine ceiling – the really bright languish or leave. The result: a government without an intellectual or ideological core which genuflects to private interests. Feudal dynasty lies at the heart of India’s social, economic and political shortcomings. To create a modern, tolerant, genuinely – not fraudulently – secular India, dynasties must be replaced by meritocracies. A government that cannot protect the people (who elect and pay that government to serve them) from intimidation and threats of violence from fundamentalists does not deserve to stay in office.

Rushdie once travelled to Mumbai and Delhi with me to deliver an annual lecture hosted by our publishing group. The theme he chose: Politics and The Novel. Freedom of expression, as he then said to a large and appreciative audience, is not absolute but it is not the business of political or religious leaders to decide its limits. For that there is the law and the Constitution. During our two-hour flight from Mumbai to Delhi, Rushdie spoke of his admiration for India’s tolerant secularism but decried the collusive agenda of fundamentalist Muslim leaders and their political patrons.

What does the Congress hope to gain from its handling of Rushdie? Muslim votes? If so, this is a hopelessly shortsighted strategy. Muslims are bound one day to see through the cynical ploy to exploit them for electoral gain. When that realisation gathers critical mass, there will be a backlash. Politicians who exploit religion to win power will feel the full force of that backlash sooner than they imagine.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Comments on this post are closed now

Be the first one to review.

Author

Minhaz Merchant is an author, editor, columnist and publisher. A recipient of the Lady Jeejeebhoy prize for physics, his books include biographies of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the late industrialist Aditya Birla. After three years with The Times of India and a year with India Today, he founded, at 25, Sterling Newspapers Pvt. Ltd., a pioneering publisher of six specialised journals, including Gentleman, a political and literary monthly (whose senior editors and columnists included David Davidar, Shashi Tharoor, L.K. Advani and Dom Moraes), and Business Computer, in technical collaboration with Dutch media group VNU (renamed The Nielsen Company in 2007). Minhaz is chairman and group editor-in-chief of Merchant Media Ltd. and founding-editor of Innovate, a magazine for US-based CEOs. He heads the group’s think-tank, Global Intelligence Review. Having played tournament-level cricket and tennis – and rhythm guitar for his school rock band – he likes Dire Straits, R.E.M. and Sachin Tendulkar’s straight drives in roughly reverse order.
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Minhaz Merchant is an author, editor, columnist and publisher. A recipient of the Lady Jeejeebhoy prize for physics, his books include biographies of former. . .